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22/02/2017

☆ Goonies Meets X Files, Meets Stephen King's IT! ☆

It’s a Thursday morning and I’m cold to the bone. I’m walking to the train station to begin my journey into work and I enter the train carriage feeling like I need something to warm my soul.

As I find a space on the packed commuter carriage I pull out my phone and begin to listen to the Giant Bombcast to cheer my way into Thursday with a mix of chat and video games. Just as I begin to smile I realise I have something special that I NEED to watch on Netflix…..

The previous night I had put in some forward planning and had downloaded the first Episode of Stranger Things in an attempt to finally get around to watching what the whole of Twitter was talking about last year.

From the trailer, I could see there were going to be some things in this TV series that would get my nostalgia gland working overtime. Not only that but I could also feel my geek senses tingling like crazy!

As I settled down on the train to watch this intriguing TV series I was hooked from the first 30 seconds. This is good……very good.

The music, the tone, the characters and the storyline premise has it all.

I’m picking up the following magical mix of Goonies, Stand By Me, IT, E.T with a whole host of 80’s pop culture such as BMX’s, CB Radio and Dungeons & Dragons.

Then there’s the music, which is an 80’s synth party.

This awesome TV program has Stephen King, Stephen Spielberg and Wes Craven weaved into the fabric of the writing and even the font of the title is like looking at the front page of a King novel.

Stranger Things feels like it has come along at the right time as the world seems to be going through a retro nostalgia phase as illustrated by the insane popularity of the NES Mini and maybe the fact is that people are looking back at the ‘old days’ and recalling how seemingly great things were back then compared to the world turmoil we are seeing now (rose tinted glasses)

When you dig a little deeper into this brilliant TV show you also see that it has been cut with certain other mystical factors such as influences from video games. I’m picking up traces of The Last Of Us, Silent Hill and even SOMA!

One thing I didn’t pick up on but which is actually true is the Anime influence from an Anime called Elfen Lied.

When you add all that up you get the perfect mix of geek, retro and horror all rolled into one awesome package.

The guys behind this piece of awesomeness are called the Duffer Brothers and are the 30 somethings who lived through this period of time where the show is set and this is basically their homage to 80’s culture and specifically the classic Stephen King books which they would devour as kids.

You may think I’m jumping the gun a bit here as I have only watched one 40 minute episode but I can safely say that that this is going to rule my life for the next few weeks…..